[thelist] stupid user interface usability question: how to design a parallel set of pages that users with to click 'save' before going on

张韡武 zhangweiwu at realss.com
Wed Jul 19 00:52:17 CDT 2006


Hello. I have designed my user interface this way:

gopher://sdf.lonestar.org/g/users/weiwu/interface_example_01.png

This user interface turns to be a bad design, the top row of 'tabs'
gives users impression that they could just click the other tab without
saving the content and later click 'save' to save changes made on all
tabs, but actually, each page of content must be saved separately,
because the 'tabs' are simply anchors graphiced to be like tabs. If you
click on second tab, you get prompted if you wish to navigate away from
this page *without* saving, this again create usability trouble, some
user click 'OK' thinking the modification is then saved, but actually
the modification is discarded.

Currently it is not possible to design the interface to hold all
contents in one single page (that is, provide a javascript-emulated row
of tabs, once the user click one tab, only content in that tab shows up,
other content are hidden by using javascript), nor can I adopt ajax
technology for that involve relatively big change on the design. What is
the best way to

      * prevent users thinking they could leave a page without saving,
        and motivate the users to click save button before navigating to
        another tab;


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